Contract award

Milton Keynes lifts GRAHAM Lakes Estate contract to 79.8m pounds

By Staff Writer  |  5 November 2026

Milton Keynes City Council has raised the value of its Lakes Estate regeneration contract with GRAHAM to 79,786,216.47 pounds excluding VAT, after modifying the contract to add demolition, utility diversion and meanwhile-use works.

The Council published two notices on 4 November 2026. The first, a contract award notice, records an award that dates back to December 2023. The second, published a little over three hours later, is a modification notice that sets out the change in scope and price. The award notice states that it was published to enable the modification notice to follow.

The original award

The contract, reference CU2700, was concluded on 19 December 2023 with John Graham Construction Ltd, trading as GRAHAM, of Hillsborough in County Down. The Council appointed the contractor through a further competition under the Pagabo National Framework for Major Works 2020. Two tenders were received and the award criterion was price. The further competition covered a pre-construction services agreement stage, with the works awarded once that agreement had been concluded.

Because the award was made through a compliant framework, the Council states that a contract award notice was not required at the time. The value at award was 72,400,000 pounds excluding VAT.

183 homes across five sites

The contract is for design and construction. It covers 183 homes across five sites on the Lakes Estate in Bletchley: Burmnoor Close, Melfort Drive, Drayton Road and sites on Windermere Drive, together with a remodelled Warren Park. It also includes section 278 highway works and space for a nursery, a community centre and two retail units.

The modification

The modification notice gives the value before the change as 75,219,765.45 pounds excluding VAT, a figure that takes account of earlier modifications, price adaptations and average inflation. After the change the value is 79,786,216.47 pounds excluding VAT, an increase of 4,566,451.02 pounds. The contract duration moves from 40 months to 51 months.

The additional works are demolition, the diversion of utilities and works associated with meanwhile use of the land. The notice says that the demolition works were included in the original procurement and that they and the other additional works have become necessary.

The Council relies on Regulation 72(1)(b) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. The notice gives the reason as the need for additional works by the original contractor, and states that a change of contractor cannot reasonably be made for technical and economic reasons. It says that the demolition works interface directly with utility infrastructure, installations and site operations delivered under the existing contract, for which GRAHAM retains ongoing responsibilities.

According to the notice, bringing in a different contractor would cause inconvenience and duplicate costs. It lists repeated surveys and investigations, the management of several contractors on a live regeneration site, programme delays and continued site holding costs. Those holding costs include an extension of additional 24-hour security, which the Council says has been needed because of an increase in trespass, vandalism and damage at the site.

The Council states that the modification is below the 50 per cent threshold that Regulation 72(1)(b) allows. The review body named for the procurement is the High Court of England and Wales. GRAHAM is not recorded as a small or medium-sized enterprise.